(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) Leftist activist organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center are coming under legal fire for tarnishing the reputations of conservative organizations, specifically the labeling of them as “hate groups.”
The SPLC designated the Dustin Inman Society, a conservative group that promotes “legal, sustainable and reduced immigration,” as an “anti-immigration hate group,” adding it to their “hate map,” which, as of 2021, monitored 733 “hate groups” across the country, Just the News reported. The Society, in turn, filed a defamation lawsuit.
U.S. District Judge Keith Watkins refused to dismiss the Dustin Inman Society’s case against the SPLC, though he did not provide his reasoning.
What Watkins did note, however, is that calling the Dustin Inman Society an “anti-immigration” group is factually incorrect, contrary to the SPLC’s prior claims.
The decision could have serious implications for the SPLC, which relies on the cooperation of the legal profession to uphold its protected status as a group that, under the First Amendment, expresses its “non-actionable opinion.”
D.A. King, founder and president of the Dustin Inman Society, said that the SPLC is one of the greatest obstacles that Americans face in retaking their country.
“We’ve overcome what I am told is the biggest and most often interjected hurdle when people try to fight back against the well-funded Southern Poverty Law Center.”
Despite the ongoing case, the SPLC website still lists the Dustin Inman Society as a “Georgia-based anti-immigrant hate group founded and led by activist D.A. King” which “focuses on vilifying all immigrants.”
According to the SPLC, King regularly demonizes immigrants while working with the Georgia state legislature, playing a “significant role” in “passing anti-immigration legislation in Georgia.”
They also accuse King of “working with some of the most hardcore elements of the anti-immigrant movement, including white nationalists.”
The SPLC, however, has made waves recently with the announcement in March that one of its lawyers, Thomas Jurgens, may be charged with domestic terrorism following his participation in the violent protesting in Atlanta.
Will the SPLC be listing itself as a hate group? https://t.co/jdKzGXZMaX
— Rep. Dan Bishop (@RepDanBishop) March 6, 2023
